So I have a retired but still very serviceable PC that I intend to use as my first home server. I gave two basic goals in self-hosting:
- Host family media through Jellyfin, etc. This would include tv, music, and possibly books as well. Many of these will be managed through the Arr apps.
- Degoogle my phone - I’m beginning by replacing Photos with Immich, but hope to also use Home Assistant, backup other phone data such as messages media, shopping lists, etc. I hope to replace Google storage/backup with Proton Drive.
So the question is what OS should I set up to run that? My proof of concept was an immich container running in xubuntu on an old laptop. I chose Xubuntu because I like the availability of documentation and community support for Ubuntu like distros, but wanted a lower powered alternative for the older device.
It seems to be working well, but I’ve had a few hiccups trying to update it, and I’ve heard that once you get into it, Linux distros like Ubuntu are not very user friendly for self-hosting as a beginner.
So is it better on the whole for a beginner to have a popular distro with lots if documentation and step by step guides, or to have a purpose-built OS like TrueNAS that might be more straightforward, but with less support?
On a PC? Anything except ChromeOS or Android, I suppose.
I like CentOS, or rather Alma or Rocky now. Very stable, very easy to manage, lots of community support.
Rocky now is what Centos used to be, a downstream rebuild of Redhat Enterprise. Cento Stream is now a rolling release and is pretty much RHEL unstable.
OP, CentOS and CentOS Steam are two *very* different beasts, you don’t want Stream.
I wouldn’t go for CentOS either because you’ll have to replace it anyway.
I’m mentioning that because you can download the old CentOS, but like the commenter above me said, you can do Alma or Rocky.
I would go for Debian, but that’s a personal preference.